Virgin Media is back online following an five hour outage that left thousands of Britons unable to access the internet.
According to Down Detector, the problems started at 06:34 BST, and affected customers across the country.
While the reason for the outage remains unclear, of those who reported issues, 74 per cent said they were struggling with landline internet, while 24 per cent were experiencing a total blackout.
Meanwhile, two per cent said they were struggling with TV streaming.
A Virgin Media spokesperson told MailOnline: ‘We’ve restored broadband services for customers but are closely monitoring the situation as our engineers continue to investigate.
It’s one of the most popular broadband providers in the UK, but Virgin Media experienced problems this morning
According to Down Detector, the problems started at 06:34 BST, and affected customers across the country
Virgin Media provided a comment via Twitter, saying: ‘We’re aware of an issue that is affecting broadband services for Virgin Media customers as well as our contact centres.’
‘We apologise for any inconvenience caused.’
The tech giant tweeted about the issue this morning after receiving a flurry of complains, saying: ‘We’re aware of an issue that is affecting broadband services for Virgin Media customers as well as our contact centres.
‘Our teams are currently working to identify and fix the problem as quickly as possible and we apologise to those customers affected.’
People across the country complained of problems, with hot spots in big cities such as London, Cardiff and Birmingham.
One frustrated Virgin Media customer tweeted: ‘#VirginMedia completely broken again. Little or no information about what or when it will be back .. don’t ever let pricing and fake speeds entice you in.. its always down or slow..’
Another added: ‘Kind of ironic, everything down nationwide for #virginmedia the only thing up is the prices #VirginMediaoutage’
Although some Twitter users do say that the reaction may have been a little extreme.
‘Try going outside or doing summat else for a bit you dafties! we didn’t have the internet when we were kids and got by ok. #virginmedia,’ said @Cheeses0fNaz.
The Virgin Media Service Status checker site was also briefly down, and directed the visitor to a holding page saying ‘We’re doing some work on our site’.
Customers took to Twitter to vent their frustrations about the service from Virgin Media
Alex Tofts, broadband expert at Broadband Genie, said: ‘Millions of Virgin Media customers have just seen their bills rise at the start of the month, so a mass outage like this is a real kick in the teeth.
‘Many consumers will be with Virgin because of its reputation for the UK’s fastest fibre broadband packages, so any slowdown in service will be particularly frustrating. It will also put extra pressure on the provider, whose customer service has sometimes struggled to keep up with its speeds.
‘As well as its recent hikes, of around 13.8 per cent on average, Virgin Media has also been criticised for tying future bill rises to inflation – and deciding to use the typically higher Retail Price Index to calculate them.
‘Because these will be part of the providers’ contracts it means customers will no longer be allowed to leave within 30 days of a rise.
‘It is to be hoped that Virgin Media will be using the extra money from this year’s price hike to improve its infrastructure and reduce the chance of outages like this in the future.
‘The only crumb of comfort for customers is that, in the event of long outages, the automatic compensation customers should receive has also risen alongside inflation.
‘If you are a Virgin Media customer and your service has still not been fixed after two working days you will be eligible to get £9.33 for each day you remain offline under Ofcom rules.’
In July last year, the popular broadband provider suffered similar issues that affected customers in Reading for about an hour.
Plus, back in 2021, customers were unable to access TV services for more than 10 hours, after Virgin Media suffered a ‘major power outage’ nationwide.
Down Detector gets network status updates from various sources including social media and reports submitted to its website.
People across the country complained of problems, with hot spots in big cities such as London, Cardiff and Birmingham
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